


Nothing but Ashes

by Runeless



Category: RWBY
Genre: AU, Angst, Bargains, Character Death, Destiny, Dying to save another, F/M, Jaune goes out, Living on, Pyrrha lives, Sacrifice, Sadness, Spoilers, Volume 3 Spoilers, arkos, as his namesake did, but she takes, but sometimes you burn, flipped death, for the right reasons, is a harsh mistress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-04
Updated: 2016-03-04
Packaged: 2018-05-24 16:00:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6158944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Runeless/pseuds/Runeless
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He burns to death as Beacon falls, and there is nothing left for her but ashes.  AU, wherein Jaune, not Pyrrha, dies in Volume 3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing but Ashes

Nothing but Ashes

 

                She is so surprised when he shoves her in the locker that by the time she thinks to use her Semblance to stop it and send her back, he is already dead, though she will not know it until she reaches the tower’s top and finds Ruby there unconscious, and his sword and shield, flecked with his blood.

                Of Jaune Arc, there was nothing but ashes.

                -

                Pyrrha is the mightiest student in school, but the most powerful people can still be caught off-guard.  She kisses him, and he _knows_ what it means- the last kiss before the last dance, Pyrrha dying all alone against power she cannot withstand.  Throwing herself at it, a hero and a martyr at the last.  She will die and after death she will suffer the one fate she has hated all this time: she will be put on the highest of pedestals, remembered as the holy woman who sacrificed herself to save all of Beacon, who died for them.

And because Jaune loves her, he does the kindest thing he can.  Even as she gives him their first and only kiss, he throws her behind himself, using a move she taught him, in a single swift motion.  She is so surprised- so caught up in the emotion of the kiss, so focused on her feelings for him and her terror of dying and her conviction that she _must_ go up the tower- that there is no room in her mind to _defend_ herself, and she lands heavily in the locker.  He slams the door and activates it, and she is airborne in seconds.  It is into the distance before too long, and now she is safe; now Pyrrha cannot die here, in the fall of Beacon.  She may still be upheld, but she will not be remembered as being on a pedestal no one could reach.

He picks up his sword and shield, and he goes into the tower.  Someone _must_ confront Cinder, for Jaune believes in destiny; he knows someone must die here, and dramatically, in battle with Cinder atop the ruins.  It was either him or Pyrrha, and between the two of them, _he_ is the one who dreams of being a great hero; Pyrrha _is_ a great hero, and hates it.  He will be kind to her, and he will give himself here; destiny will have its sacrifice.  He will die, and Pyrrha will live.  He will go down in history as a hero of Beacon, and she will get to go down in history however she so chooses; perhaps as a mighty goddess, as she so fears, or perhaps as simply a woman, as she so hopes.

(Please.  Hear my prayer, whomsoever is up there.  Destiny… take _me_.  Let Pyrrha be happy.)

He goes up the stairs, and atop them he finds Cinder, and he finds death.  She barely battles him, mostly amused by his flailing attempts- but he is good at strategy, and there are so many things laying around to use.  He irritates and bothers her, and it draws her attention enough that she wastes time trying to kill him. 

When it ends- and he is nailed by her arrows to a wall, stricken and broken, his shield and sword discarded- she walks up to him with a snarl on her face, to burn him away cruelly.

He grins. _This_ is the death destiny promised Pyrrha.  It has accepted him instead.  It is a cruel god, destiny, but it is not entirely without room to bargain. 

“ Why?” Cinder asks.  Every step sounds like crinkling glass- he must be crazy, he’s hearing things.  Nonetheless the tinkle of glass shoes shatter with each footstep Cinder takes.  “ Why fight me?  You’re not much.”

He sighs.  “ The woman I love- she’d have fought you.  She’d have died.  I went instead.  Put her in a locker.”

And that stops her for a second, her cocking her head.  “ You… fought for her?  I’m going to kill you.  Did you come here to die for her?”

He nods.  It’s the _only_ reason he came up here.  Destiny demanded a death, and he must give it one to spare Pyrrha.  “ Yes.”

There is an odd look then, and Cinder seems so very old- fairytale old, mythically old, the kind of old you only get when there are legends about your life and all of them are wrong.  “ A knight in shining armor… Rare and beautiful as angels.  I have a story to tell you, boy.”

“ Jaune,” he interrupts.  She might as well know his name.  “ Jaune Arc.”

She nods.  “ Cinder Fall.  I suppose this is our first _real_ meeting, when you get down to it.”

He nods back.  He is in so much pain from the burning arrows inside him that, oddly, he is in _no_ pain; he has suffered so much in training and being at Beacon that his body is inured to it anyway, and fire is a pain beyond all others, too much for his brain to process.  Feeling oddly formal, like this is a conversation at a party rather than what it is, he says, “ I’m interested in hearing your story, if you wouldn’t mind telling it.”

She smiles at that, amused by his polite tone, perhaps, or simply by the insanity of the situation.  Her words are so very quiet, they are hard to hear, past the sounds of battle around them, the top of the tower an eye of perfect peace in this storm of war.

“ A long time ago- so very long ago,” Cinder says, “ there was a man, who told me he would protect me against everything.  And I believed him, and he put glass slippers on my feet, and he carried me home.  And you have heard stories of this, fairy tales, and all of them end there- he carried me home, and into his bed and his life.”

“ Happily ever after.”

(The phrase carries so much bitterness and pain- and worse than both, _loss_ \-  that Jaune flinches.  There is a _want_ there that burns, and he understands why Cinder is fire- she is eat up inside with this burning want.)

“ But… his father objected to his marriage with me, a landless, almost disinherited noble, a penniless lady with no lands or tithes to offer.  Argued he should have married my stepmother’s daughter, because the stepmother was influential at court.  And he _agreed_ , and had me thrown in a dungeon on the off-chance he might find me useful later- but the prince overthrew the king a month later.  He’d had it planned for years, tired of his father holding say over him.  I found out a year later- a year of the jailer’s cruel use of me, because he had claimed I’d _died_ a week in, so that he would have to himself a pretty noble thing to play with.  I found out by accident, when the prince brought a prisoner down personally and found me there, broken and used.  And he _laughed_ and claimed he’d forgotten, and gave me formally to the jailer as a gift, saying he understood why he’d hidden me away.  He even gave him my glass slippers, as a _joke_.”

Jaune’s wide eyes say enough.

“ And when Salem came to me, and offered me this,” she said, holding up a hand and a blaze inside it, “ what _else_ could I say?”

“ Salem?” he asks.  She shakes her head.

“ I’m sorry, it’s rude to introduce people to the story you haven’t met, and will never meet.  Suffice to say I am here on orders and under orders, and I serve another.  She came to me and I freed myself and burned the kingdom to the ground- and it isn’t enough.  It will never _be_ enough, until all the world burns.  Until _everyone_ is afraid of me.”

She sighs, then says, “ But you… you get to hear this, because I admire you, boy.  You’ve done the one thing I wanted _him_ to do- and I respect that.  But… I’m afraid the story is at an end.  I have tasks yet undone, and I must kill you now.  If I were to let you live, it would be… demeaning to you.”

“ Demeaning?” he says.  She nods.

“ If you die here, you die a martyr, a victim- but if you live, then you were just someone too unimportant to kill.  And for my own reasons, I won’t accept that ending for you.”

“ Thank you,” he says, and means it.  Cinder, hearing that, widens her eyes just a little before she reverts to normal, drawing a great burning bow.

“ Any last words?” she asks.  He spits blood, and grins.

 “ Do you believe in destiny?”

Cinder’s face tells him so much more than her angry “ Yes,” and then there is only pain.

                -

She doesn’t know how to deal with it.

                She was the one that was supposed to die, wasn’t she?  Her very name meant Pyrrhic Victory- a win that is a loss, that costs too much.  Oh, her parents had been unaware of it when they’d named her, but everything since- her incredible powers, her mighty strength, her isolation from others and her celebrity- combined with the unfortunate provenance of her name, they all seemed to be adding up to her taking a fall- to her being the girl who had so much potential and wasted it all, dying uselessly.

                She has known this her whole life, and it has never really hurt her.  You have to be a person to be hurt, after all.  It wasn’t until Jaune, and Nora and Ren, that she has really considered herself a _person_ ; people have friends and connections and reasons to live.  Until them, Pyrrha had considered herself more of an image than a person- a silhouette hollowed out by her own prowess, some marble statue of a war goddess, nothing with a human heart.

                She wishes she could go back to being that- and hates herself for doing so.  It would be unfair to Nora and Ren for her to retreat inside herself- and unfair to Ruby, too, who travels with them now, who witnessed Jaune’s final moments and was so horror-struck by them that she awakened a power nearly unbelievable. 

                ( Ruby came to her and in whispers said, “ I’m so sorry I couldn’t save him”, but Pyrrha did not hate her.  Ruby proved how much she cared by her fury, by power untold awakening in her.  Pyrrha, who did not save him either, cannot blame Ruby, who at least struck back after his death.)

                She will be there for them, as they will be there for her- she cannot go back to being an icon, she must be a person.  It was so sweet at first, and now it hurts so much, to be a person.  A figurehead cannot love, but now Pyrrha sees the flipside of that coin: a figurehead cannot weep, either.  She has cried more in the last few months than she has in all her life put together.

                He was her first friend.  She has had mentors and enemies and admirers, but until Jaune, she had never had a _friend_.  And through Jaune, she gained Nora and Ren- through Jaune, she gained all of RWBY, even Weiss, who finally grew to see past her might to the rather normal girl underneath it all.  Jaune, whose thickheaded stupidity was, in its own way, the most profound wisdom Pyrrha had ever seen.  He was blind to what she was, and thus, he was the one person with open eyes to _who_ she was.  She taught him swordplay and combat and magic; he taught her people, and laughter, and joy.  She got the better deal by far, and she will owe him a debt she cannot repay forever….

                …She never got to say goodbye.  He kissed her, and he left behind only this sword and shield, which she has taken up in his name- the last connection he will ever have with her.  They match her armor now, her golden armor deliberately dulled to silver, self-tarnished by her and paint.  Gold looks good on marble, on a great heroine, on cereal boxes and on televisions.  Jaune’s colors were always more practical- and now so is Pyrrha, no longer the invincible girl, but the broken-hearted woman who now fights for the day she can strangle Cinder with her bare hands.

                (The hardest part is the night, because when she sleeps, she returns to the girl she was, dreams Jaune is alive and they are all together, happy children in school, and every morning is an attempt to wake back up into this nightmare reality, where Jaune is dead.  Every day, she wakes up, he is dead, and she is alive.  It is the hardest thing she has ever done, to open her eyes each morning.)

                She loves him still, and will honor him as best she can.  She will not let him be nothing but ashes; she will soldier on in his memory, and make every devotion to her a devotion to Jaune.  It will never feel like it is enough, but it will be _something_ , and it helps Pyrrha get through the day.

                (I love you Jaune)

**Author's Note:**

> Oh, Pyrrha. Oh, my poor broken heart.
> 
> I don't accept that Pyrrha's death is really a good idea for RWBY- I feel too much like it's stuffing her in the fridge to give Jaune a character arc. Oh, I know that Monty planned this from the start, but the thing is - it just feels... off. It doesn't fit either of their namesakes nor their characters. Pyrrha isn't the character named after someone who died burning- that's Jaune. Pyrrha's name was for Pyrrhic victories and her design is Achilles- she should have died after beating Cinder, perhaps, or doing something grand at great cost. She had plot left- dealing with accidental murder, Fall Maiden power, revelations of the world. Her death nullifies all of this, and condemns her to be remembered as the one who was too good to live, who was such a hero she had to die- the very thing Pyrrha would never, ever want to be remembered as. Pyrrha, who just wanted to be human.
> 
> Jaune's story- of becoming stronger- was done, he had proven he was stronger throughout and deserved a chance to show it in one final battle. He had a *right* to fight Cinder atop Beacon, to die in defense of the place where he was trying to become a great hero, because frankly that entire concept- of training to be a hero- died with Beacon, and Jaune was the perfect character to symbolize the transition from "anime Harry Potter" to the grim world RWBY now exists in. Jaune deserved to be remember as the hero who died for Beacon. Jaune, who just wanted to be a hero.
> 
> Is it a misstep by the crew? Certainly. So here's my alt version of how it should have went down, Jaune burning on a makeshift stake and Pyrrha struggling to survive the aftermath. Destiny demands sacrifice, but it allows for a replacement. 
> 
> As for Cinder's backstory, I prefer villains who are less clean-cut than "is evil", I like them to have things they love and admire too. And there is so much to work with in her origin fairytale. Plus, if she *hadn't* used up a lot of time talking to Jaune, Ruby wouldn't have gotten there in time; Jaune's significantly improved but he's not even close to Pyrrha's level, and the only reason he survives long enough to even have this conversation with Cinder is that she is so amused by his attempts she can't even bother to mount a proper offensive against him until he gets in a few lucky blows. But nobility of heart can touch someone who had, once, only wished for it to be present in another.
> 
> Pyrrha's part takes place, obviously, after Volume 3; team RRNP, in order of the teammates who would deal with this best.


End file.
